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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Stone Wall Stories - #3 Dogtown, Massachusetts

Near Cherry Street in Gloucester, in a large tract of conservation
land surrounding the reservoir, you can find the remnants of an early village. This was the earliest settled place in
Gloucester, when the town grew up inland.
After the War of 1812 the people felt safer about living near the
harbor, and most left this area to move to the coast. Only the poorest people stayed behind in what
became known as “Dogtown” because of the abandoned dogs who scrounged the
cellar holes and shacks. Widows,
vagabonds and the insane were left behind with the dogs.

This Babson boulder marks the spot
of Dogtown Square

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Gloucester
resident Roger Babson hired Italian stonemasons to carve inspirational
quotations on 22 boulders in Dogtown. At
the time, the land was clear of trees, and there were numbers marking the
cellar holes of colonial residents identified in his grandfather John James Babson’s
“History
of Gloucester”. Now, the area is
heavily wooded, and hikers have to search for the numbers, cellar holes and
Babson boulders.

An antique postcard showing what Dogtown looked like
before it was swallowed up with forest

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About Me

Author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog. My family research includes Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, with a smattering of Nova Scotia. Please contact me if you see your ancestors on this blog. I would love to share information. I am the recording secretary of the New Hampshire Mayflower Society, President of the Londonderry Historical Society, member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Mass. Society of Genealogists, The National Genealogical Society, and the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.